The Destroyer of the World
by Virtual Deliverance
Summary: Marty had spent 30 years of his life looking forward to October 21, 2015. When the day finally came, and the world was nothing like he had seen, he descended into madness. Rated M for violence.
1. The last straw

It was October 21, 2015. The Chicago Cubs were playing against the New York Mets at Wrigley Field, and Marty McFly was intently watching the match on TV, in the living room of his house at 3793 Oakhurst Street, Hilldale. His wife Jennifer Parker was beside him.

Marty reached out for a glass of water. His hand was shaking.  
"Let me help you" said Jennifer, in turn reaching out for the water.  
"No!" Marty said brusquely. "I can do it myself, dammit!" he added, trying to control his tremors without much success, his eyes never leaving the TV screen.

Marty's hand knocked the glass off the table. The glass fell on the floor and shattered.

"Oh Marty, look at what you've done" said Jennifer, "you should try to accept your condition, and let other people help you. You're just making it harder for yourself."  
"Not now, Jennifer" replied Marty. "I'm watching the game. This is important."

The TV announcer was horribly biased against the Cubs. Few seconds later, he was commenting the action that sealed the result for the game: "And strike three called! We haven't been to the World Series since 2000 and the Mets are on their way back!"  
On the screen, the Mets were celebrating their victory.

Marty sprang up from the couch. "Nooooo!" he exclaimed, wide-eyed in disbelief.  
He stared at the images on the screen. It was all real: the Cubs had just been swept, and would not take part to the World Series.  
Marty's face lost its color. He sat on the couch again, holding his head with his hands. "It can't be, it can't be..." he repeated.

"Is everything all right?" Jennifer asked.  
"No, no, no... I need to lie down." he said.  
"Are you sick? Do you want me to call a doctor?" she asked.  
"No" said Marty, "I want you to call Doc."


	2. A matter of responsibility

Marty had insisted to meet Doc in person, so Jennifer drove him to his lab.  
She rang the doorbell. Few second later, the door opened and Doc invited them in.

Time had left its mark on Emmett Brown. His face had got thinner, his body had got weaker, and even his way of talking was not as energetic as it used to be.  
His lab was, if possible, even messier than usual, with scientific and technical equipment scattered all over. In front of the big sliding door was the Delorean time machine. This particular version had no Mister Fusion installed, and instead sported the yellow cap of the plutonium reactor.

"Please, sit down" said Doc. "Marty, you sounded so upset on the phone. What's wrong?"  
Marty remained up. "Everything's wrong!" he exclaimed. "Reality is wrong!"  
Doc's face made a slight twitch, as if anticipating something.

"Ever since that day you took me to the future, I have been looking forward with hope to the times to come" continued Marty. "Knowing what would happen in the future gave me confidence. I knew that Jennifer and I would get married. I knew we would have two children, Marlene and Marty Junior. I knew I would still be healthy. I knew my parents would age gracefully, and they would still be alive and well. I knew I would see a world where energy is free and clean, where everyone can go anywhere on his own, in his flying car. I knew the Cubs would sweep the Miami Gators today, and win the World Series! I even placed bets on that result, 'cause that's not something you forget!"

Doc interrupted him: "Marty, you know no one should know too much about their future..."

Marty continued his tirade. "And don't think I ever stopped hoping! No! I always hoped! All this time, I made my decisions around that glimpse of future I saw, in an effort to make it real! I married Jennifer because that's what I saw! I bought that house in Hilldale because that's what I saw!"

"So what's the problem?" Doc asked.

"Nothing of what I saw came to be, that's the problem!" exclaimed Marty. "All my hope was in vain! I got Parkinson's in 1989! I was just 21, for Christ's sake, and I lost the ability to play the guitar or ride a skateboard! When I realized I would never be a musician because my tremors would only get worse, I even got a Ph.D. in Physics, because I wanted to make that future real, yet the only paying job I found was teaching in high school! And there's more! My dad died with cancer in 2002! My mom died with Alzheimer's in 2014! There has been no energy revolution, no Mister Fusion, we still depend on hydrocarbons! Where are self-adjusting jackets, hoverboards, flying cars? Why do Jennifer and I have no kids? Why am I still sick? What happened to the timeline?"

"The future has not been written yet. No one's has." replied Doc.

"No. Don't give me that philosphical bullshit, Doc! You're a physicist, and so am I, because you inspired me to become one!" roared Marty, now mad with rage. "Give me a physicist's answer! Give me equations! Tell me precisely when and how the timeline was deviated from what we saw, to this... this... abomination of mankind!"

"You should really try to look at the positive side." Doc insisted.

"What positive side?" insisted Marty in turn. "What should I be like? _Ooh, I'm so happy for my parents' death! For pollution! For my disease! For 9/11!_ Is that what you want me to say?"

Doc stepped closer to Marty and put a hand on his shoulder. "Marty, you know I have always been honest with you." he said. "You have to believe me when I say that everything happened for a reason."

Marty's rage seemed to subside a little. "What reason?" he asked. Then, a terrible thought entered his mind. "Oh no." he said. "It's my fault, isn't it? That night, November 12, 1955, I didn't really stop Biff from using that almanac. Before I could take it from him, he must have copied some results and placed some bets anyway. I didn't prevent the Hell Valley timeline, I only delayed it. Right?"

"No!" exclaimed Doc. "Don't even think about it! I can say with absolute confidence that you were not, in any way, responsible for how the events unfolded in this timeline."

"How can you say that?" asked Marty.

"Because... I was." answered Doc.


	3. Doc Brown saves the world

Marty froze in place, staring at the old scientist. "You... you..." he managed to say.  
His face twisted in a grimace. He clenched his fists and his teeth. Finally, he threw himself at Doc and grabbed him by the shirt. "You bastard!" he screamed.

Doc grabbed Marty's wrists. "Calm down, Marty." he said. "All I did was in good faith. I did it to save the world, and what's more important, I succeeded."

Marty released his hold.  
"If you just sit down and let me tell you exactly what I did, you'll understand everything." continued Doc.

Marty stepped back and went to sit in one of Doc's armchairs. Doc and Jennifer did the same.

"It all began in 1897. My time train... at least, the first version, was complete. Let's call it Time Train 1.0." started Doc.  
"The capacitors had taken two years to charge, and I knew they would not last more than one trip, so I had to make it count. The destination time I chose was January 1, 2035. Precisely 150 years after I reached the Old West.

As I predicted, when I got there, the capacitors were FUBAR. That was not a problem, because by 2035, fusion and hover technology were so advanced, they could make a train fly and even make a flux capacitor work for multiple trips without refueling. I made extensive repairs, and when I was done, the train looked like what you saw that Sunday morning with Jennifer. Let's call it Time Train 2.0.

I used Time Train 2.0 to reach 2135, and what I found... was a wasteland. A neverending winter enveloped the whole planet, electronic technology was a distant memory and people lived as scavengers in nomadic tribes, seeking shelter in what remained of devastated cities. From generation to generation, they recounted tales of a lost utopia and an event they called the Great Disaster, caused by an individual they called the Destroyer of the World."

"So what did you do?" asked Marty.

"I needed to prepare a plan of action" said Doc. "I considered the possibility that, in spite of my efforts, I would fail and die, so, first, I came to say hi to you and Jennifer with my wife and children, then I took them safely back to 1897, and finally I returned to 2035. From there, I moved forward, one year at a time, until I pinpointed the year of the Great Disaster as 2045."

"Did you go there?" asked Marty.

"Yes" said Doc. "And I saw the rise of a new means of communication. An open source information space connecting all sorts of devices from computers, to phones, to televisions, to energy generators. The World Wide Web."

Marty was about to say something, but Doc continued. "And then... on October 21, I saw a nuclear holocaust. I saw a hundred million Mister Fusion devices explode at the same time all over the world. I saw four billion people die instantly. I travelled back and forth, trying to discover what had triggered the explosions. And then I discovered the identity of the Destroyer of the World. Griff Tannen."

"That's impossible!" Marty was in complete disbelief. "Griff has cerebral palsy! You know the rumors, right? Biff impregnating his own daughter? Even in that other timeline, Griff sounded like he was... special."

"Indeed, Marty." nodded Doc.  
"But in most cases of cerebral palsy, there are no learning disabilities. When Griff was in prison, with nothing to do, he started to study, and when he got out, he started a software company. Grifftech. On October 21, 2045, he released a virus from a Grifftech computer. The virus infected all Mister Fusion devices and caused them to explode.

That's when all became clear to me. I knew what I had to do. I flew all the way to Salt Lake City and reached March 10, 1989. The fathers of cold fusion, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, were running their experiments at the University of Utah. I made sure those experiments would fail! I replaced their equipment with flawed copies, and I deliberately introduced mistakes in their notes. It worked! Time Train 2.0 disappeared before my eyes, replaced by the plutonium-powered version of the Delorean. Soon, scientist groups all over the world announced their inability to reproduce their results, and in less than a year, cold fusion was dead.

However, I didn't mean to halt progress completely. I reached Geneva, Switzerland, and met with a young computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee, who was an employee of CERN. I gave him the World Wide Web specifications I took from 2045, and assisted him in implementing them, fifty-six years earlier.

So, you see Marty, I may have prevented an energy revolution, but I kickstarted a computer revolution! Every time you connect to the Internet, you use technology that was not supposed to exist for thirty more years!"

Marty could not believe his ears and sat there, in silence.  
In his mind, he thought of all the time he had spent wondering why the timeline was deviating so much from what he saw, all the time he had spent hoping that somehow it would fix itself before that fateful date of October 21, 2015. As it turned out, the culprit of everything was his best friend.

Marty was still mad with rage, and stared at Doc with bloodshot eyes. He stood up from his armchair.  
"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?" he finally thundered.


	4. The final breakdown

"Please, Marty. It's okay" said Doc.  
"Okay my ass!" yelled Marty. "You deprived the world of infinite, free, clean energy, in exchange for selfie sticks!"  
"I made sure humanity survives 2045." replied Doc.

Marty approached him. "I remember a man I used to know" he said, pacing around him. "He told me that the problem is never technology, it's always people. What's left in you of that man?"

"I fail to see your point." said Doc.

"My point is" hissed Marty, "that if in 2045 Griff Tannen blows up fusion generators, you are not supposed to remove fusion generators from the timeline! You are supposed to remove Griff Tannen from the timeline!"

"It's all in the past." said Doc.  
"Stop saying words, Emmett." retorted Marty, pacing and looking around the lab. "It is now clear to me that you are the real Destroyer of the World, and I will do whatever it takes to stop you. Because, you see, the problem is never technology. It's always people."

Marty set his eyes on the work desk nearby. ROHS-compliant solder, copper cables, a soldering iron, a box with the radioactivity symbol, a hammer, a set of screwdrivers, a set of wrenches.  
That wrench.  
Chromium-vanadium tool steel.  
Sturdy.  
Heavy.

Marty grabbed the wrench and ran toward Doc, with a scream of desperation.  
Jennifer intercepted him and grabbed his arm from behind. He turned and hit her in the middle of the chest. "You, stay out of this!" he yelled.

With Jennifer on the ground, writhing in pain, Marty swung the wrench at Doc, who ducked and dodged the blow. The wrench smashed through a cabinet full of chemicals.

Marty looked at one of the bottles. Sulfuric acid. He grabbed it and threw it at Doc.  
The bottle shattered on the floor, less that two feet away from Doc, who stepped away from the acid. This brought him within Marty's reach.

With a final swing, Marty struck hard against Doc's nape. Metal met bone, and bone lost.  
Doc lay on the floor, motionless.  
Marty placed his fingers on the old scientist's neck. No pulse.

Behind, he heard Jennifer's voice. "Marty, please, end this madness. I'm hurt!" she said.  
"It will be over soon." he replied. "Soon we'll be home, with two teenage kids named Marty Junior and Marlene. We'll have flying cars in our garage, I won't have Parkinson's anymore, my parents will still be alive, kids will roam the streets with hoverboards and everyone will laugh at video games where you have to use your hands."

Marty grabbed the plutonium case, put on a radiation suit and inserted a charge into the reactor. He placed the case into the trunk, entered the time machine and set the destination time: March 7, 1989.  
"Three days. Should be enough to reach the University of Utah." he said to himself.

He closed the gullwing door, drove out of the lab and accelerated to 88 miles per hour. The Delorean disappeared in a blinding flash of light, leaving two trails of fire behind.


	5. The Destroyer of the World

Three days later - or twenty-six years before - Marty was approaching the Department of Physics at the University of Utah, wondering which door Doc would use. Then he remembered a piece of advice from Doc himself: "It's no use to sneak around. Move in plain sight, and make it look like you have a reason to be there." As a teenager, Marty had followed it regularly whenever he was late for school.

Marty opened the main door, walked in, and remained next to it, waiting.  
Because that was the crucial part of the mission, Marty had deliberately taken less medications than usual: a stiff gait would attract less attention than uncontrollable movements.

After two and a half hours, a man with a wild white mane, dressed in a sober gray suit, came in through the door. Marty pulled something out of his pocket, and when Doc walked next to him, hit him in the abdomen.  
Doc immediately stopped, bent over in pain, and fell on the floor. He put a hand to his midsection and looked at it. He was bleeding.

Marty approached him and crouched. "Hi, Doc" he said slowly. "Trying to kill cold fusion, are you?"  
He showed the bloody Swiss Army knife he was holding in his hand. "You're not the only killer here." he added.  
Doc coughed. "M... Marty." he said, in a whisper. "How do you know?"  
"You told me, in a version of 2015 that's not supposed to exist." answered Marty.  
"I must do it... please help me..." whispered Doc. He coughed again.  
"I won't let you become the Destroyer of the World." said Marty, and plunged his knife right into Doc's heart.  
Doc let out an atrocious scream, while blood poured out of his body.

With the last of his strength, Doc tried to utter a final word. "P... Pa..."  
One last cough. "Para... dox."  
Doc ceased to move. Only then Marty stood up and walked away.

While Marty was returning to the Delorean, the air around him felt weird. It seemed to vibrate and transmit vibrations to his skin. In the distance, a soft rumble was gradually increasing in intensity.  
He looked up, expecting to see a plane, and what he saw froze the blood in his veins. It was as though the sky was a surface made out of pointlike particles, which were now coming apart and revealing a dark void beyond, blacker than any black he had ever seen.  
Around him, the same thing happened to the buildings, trees and streets, while the rumble rose to a deafening noise.

Marty looked down at his own body, and was horrified to see it was coming apart too.  
In a flash of intuition, he realized what was happening. In 2015, Doc had told him how he had changed the timeline in 1989. Then, Marty had reached 1989 and killed Doc, preventing those changes from happening. But then, 1989 Doc would never become 2015 Doc and would never tell Marty of those changes. Marty would never reach 1989, so Doc would make those changes and tell Marty about them in 2015. Marty would then reach 1989 and...  
It was the classic grandfather paradox, which was now destroying the universe, just as Doc had once predicted. In an instant, all matter tore itself apart.

Elementary particles, now chaotically mixed together, formed a uniform, but unstable, hot plasma, which collapsed under its own gravity, becoming a gargantuan black hole.  
The energy density was too great to be sustained, and the black hole exploded into a new Big Bang.  
The four fundamental forces separated and gave birth to fermions and bosons. What would happen from there was nobody's concern, because for thirteen billion years, nobody would be there to care.


End file.
